(Textbook) Chapter 1 Lesson 1 Flashcards
Physical Geography
The study of natural processes/the distribution of features in the environment
Human geography
The study of how people use/alter the Earth
Spatial perspective
Where something is located (and why)
Ecological perspective
The relationships between living things and their environments
“Thinking geographically”
Thinking to answer the following questions:
Where?
Why there?
Why care?
Location
The position that something occupies on Earth
Absolute location
Exact latitude and longitude of an object
Relative location
Description of where an object is compared to other places (ANYTHING other than latitude/longitude, e.g. 134 miles southeast of Vienna)
Place
A location distinguished by its physical and human characteristics
Sense of place
The emotions attached to an area based on a person’s experiences
Site
A place’s absolute location and physical characteristics
Situation
A place’s connection to other places, including transportation, political association, and economic/cultural ties
Mental maps
Internalized representations of portions of Earth’s surface
Space
Area between 2 (or more) objects
Distributed
The way objects are organized
Density
The number of things in a specific area
Pattern
How things are arranged in a particular space (geometrically, more random, etc.)
Flow
How people, goods, and information move in/out of a place
Environmental determinism
Discredited theory that promoted racism by suggesting that a location’s physical featured determined the success of people living in that location
Distance decay
The father one thing is from another, the less interaction the two things will have
Time-space compression
The relative distance between two places continues to seem less and less because of human development
Possibilism
Argues that humans have more agency than environmental determinism would suggest
Sustainability
Using the Earth’s resources in a way that ensures they will continue to be available in the future
Human-environment interaction
Concept that humans depend upon and modify the environment
Case Study Bonus: Why might the founders have chosen where to build New Orleans?
Located at the southern end of the Mississippi River
Most trade on the river would go right past the city
